January 28, 2011 | 5 – 6 pm
Location: The Barker Hangar, 3021 Airport Avenue, Santa Monica, CA 90405

Through the participation of several Catalyst members, this event takes on its own mutating shape as performers cut through space in a autonomous dance.

Human Resources, Los Angeles presents My body lies over the Ocean. My body lies over the sea. a one night performance event featuring the work of Alexis Disselkoen and Tessa Kurszewski, Billy Kheel, Paul Pescador, and Nancy Popp. My body lies over the Ocean. My body lies over the sea. focuses on site-specific situational and interactive performances. The event examines the role of the body as vehicle for physical production. Whether it is through the excursion of endurance or the transference of physicality to material form, each performer examines the role of the body as a vessel in which performance disseminates.

My body lies over the Ocean. My body lies over the sea. stems from a larger set of performance events organized by Paul Pescador. Theses performances focus on site-specific situational and interactive performances. In this event, the exhibition space is divided into multiple units. Each performer separates their piece into one of these locations. As the event unfolds varying parts of each performance begin to move, by the end of the event: performers, objects, and audience blur into one another.

Human Resources is a team of creative individuals which seeks to broaden engagement with contemporary and conceptual art, with an emphasis on performative and underexposed modes of expression.

Artists

ALEXIS DISSELKOEN and TESSA KURSZEWKI

Through the use of group activities and event-based situations Alexis Disselkoen strives to connect contemporary issues of identity and the scholarship of interpersonal relations. She works around constructions of power that inform art production, viewership and participation by creating encounters that are participatory and directed by the people that are involved. In this performance artist Tessa Kurszewski and Catalyst performers use material to create the atmosphere and space that viewers must negotiate with when experiencing the work.

BILLY KHEEL

Juxtaposing, exaggerating through the use of humor and horror across a variety of medias, Billy Kheel deconstructs and critiques the behaviors, signifiers and displays that form the construction of masculinity. Whether they question these impulses or expose its artifice, Kheel uses his physical strength and dominance to arrange flowers with a basketball hoop, conduct athletic drills, and to destroy everyday objects with his forehead.

PAUL PESCADOR

Paul Pescador conducts small-scale gestures and performances that occur in both social and private environments, such as homes, sidewalks, and galleries. The actions are small and lend themselves to repetition as a means to understand, activate, and disrupt a surrounding environment. Whether these events occur in front of an audience in a gallery or alone in a park, they are documented with a camera. The camera becomes the primary witness to the event. The event wouldn’t occur if it wasn’t recorded and the photograph without the action. They are linked and rely on one another to exist.

NANCY POPP

Nancy Popp investigate the performativity of site, geography and identity through the risky, radical endeavor of serious play. The body’s abilities and limitations are located by her situating herself in relation to elements of architectural and cultural landscapes.  She identifies openings through which to move, barriers to circumvent, pare away, break through, climb above or dive into, literally and metaphorically.  Her interest in the body, it’s physical and psychological limits, it’s identity as a site itself in relation to the sites it inhabits, is grounded in the interplay between the self and other and the space in-between.

Time: Tuesday, May 18, 2010 | 7:30 PM
Location: Outside the Honor Studios on the 3rd Floor of the ACT bldg.

"Untitled" by Katy Wang, acrylic and oil on canvas

Time: April 8 – 14, 2010
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 8, 2010 | 6:00 – 9:00 pm
Location: Catalyst Gallery

An exhibition featuring Tom Cantwell, Sumner LeVeque, Miyun Shin, and Katy Wang.

"No Regrets" by Katy Wang, acrylic on canvas

"Watch Where You're Going" by Sumner LeVeque